Monday, September 14, 2009

Question 1 in this week's Q&A with Dan DiDio at Newsarama involves Adventure Comics, the Legion, Paul Levitz, and Superboy (as if you couldn't guess). Another question was about Legion of 3 Worlds.

1) Lost_Daughter wrote:The Adventure Comics changeover. How did that happen? Was it planned? Will Legion be the stars? Will Levitz continue with Geoff's plans?

Dan DiDio: The change was in the works already before Paul stepped into the mix. And the change started at the moment we decided Francis was going to be the artist on The Flash.

What we're planning to do with The Flash ongoing series, we needed to get Francis and Geoff off the Adventure Comics series so they could concentrate on The Flash ongoing.

So we knew we had a change there. We just weren't sure exactly where and when. And we were going back and forth on which issue it was because Geoff had a really wonderful Superboy story that he wanted to tell that, unfortunately, will have to be pushed to a later date.

But my goal now is to get those guys going on Flash as soon as possible. And then when all the changes started to occur, Paul was our only choice for the series. And to be quite frank with you, before even knowing everything that was taking place, Paul was the person we were thinking about approaching for the series as well, given his association with the Legion, given his association with Adventure Comics, and his love for the title, and his love for those characters. It only made sense for him to be the one to take this and move it to its next incarnation.

Newsarama: There's no doubt that when you think of Paul, you think of Legion of Super-Heroes. But there are Conner Kent fans out there that are wondering - what's going to happen to the Superboy piece of this comic?

DiDio: We're going to see Conner's, probably, gradual leave from that book. But that's not to say Conner won't be joining a team book soon, or appearing in another series of his own at some point.

Nrama: Then as a follow-up to that question, ds69 wrote:Dan, you now have the GREATEST LSH writer back on the title, you must use an A-list artist. Who will it be?

DiDio: I don't have the artist chosen yet. We have several people in mind. What I really want to do is sit down with Paul to see what his direction, tone and feel is. And to work with him on selecting the proper artist. We want to make sure he's a part of the process as well, in choosing the artist for the book.

But because there are so many things going on now, that's a little on hold for the second. What Paul's been doing is actually getting up to speed on the Legion of Super-Heroes. He's just been going through all the work Geoff has done on the characters lately, as well as James Robinson. And he's looking to build on the foundation we have going right now.

11) Kooster wrote: Legion of 3 Worlds #5 -- Is there a near-future story about how Alan Scott got trapped in Sorcerers World? And can you comment on what George Perez is working on next?

DiDio: There is presently no Alan Scott story that I know about, at least for the moment.

Levitz created and wrote the Prince Gavyn version of Starman in Adventure Comics. After it was Dollar-Sized, it shrunk back up into a series with rotating lead stories with Aquaman, Plastic Man, and Starman (issues 467-478, Jan-Dec. 1980).

That was the time when Gerry Conway was writing the Legion, Levitz came on with issue 287 in 1982.

He wrote at least some of the Aquaman stories starting with 441. (When in doubt, Adventure brought back Aquaman. There were several runs.) And Levitz did the JSA stories during the dollar run. So he worked on over 30 issues between 441-503. I think that's enough to claim an association with the title.